PGPony
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PGPony for desktop

OpenPGP for macOS (Apple silicon and Intel), Linux and Windows. Encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify messages and files, manage your keyring, and use a hardware security key over USB, all on device. Linux ships for x86_64 and ARM64, as a .deb, a portable tarball, an AppImage or from the AUR. Like the phone apps: no accounts, no ads, no analytics, no tracking.

Download for Apple silicon Mac (.dmg)
Download for Intel Mac (.dmg)
Download for Linux (.deb)
Download for Windows (.msi)
version 3.0.5 released 2026-10-31 runtime bundled licence Apache-2.0
Apple silicon Mac · sha256
d8bb44cc9b66f7889bab0f67f5df8c792dd2cbfbaad39f5dca6fdfb92c3c9d54
Intel Mac · sha256
22767ad2cb4c6d0263262a846dca710c163c0290113e17c0adbb38dd2c79c6dc
Linux · sha256
00693c1e8a9d7e391d8f3633da58aa3b49555e2b86ba08d76c6edd2098c69479
Windows · sha256
685cd3b8a80a431dcedcb26cafca9c5c9673116180aa4ea1127d65f87010e383
More Linux builds
PackageArchsha256
Debian / Ubuntu (.deb) ARM64 b2dc87da6c1a0e802bb3bdecef7d0aedf4267f30ecf921617127760349fd5ca8
Portable tarball (.tar.gz) x86_64 83a3a4791adad6e4482111ca6722f5bab4a4d4cf99bb52c548fad257407cf344
Portable tarball (.tar.gz) ARM64 398d8850dd4f54e45fc0c2173d802bdded4d4f62d9ead34b382db25a0a6f0ddb
AppImage x86_64 c16173023addbcfd9f817c2887add0e3aeec8a1c32bb210720e1132bd817ffab
AppImage ARM64 3bdd08095b5dd3003396626d4e3f3b5b33581a1b60b778b3f5768348023d3f0e
Arch Linux (AUR) x86_64 · ARM64 pgpony-bin

The tarball and AppImage are self-contained and need no install step: extract and run bin/PGPony, or make the AppImage executable and run it. Neither registers file associations, because nothing installs a desktop entry for them; the .deb and the AUR package do.

What's new in 3.0.5.
The key list is split into My Keys and Public Keys, as on the phones. My Keys holds your key pairs and any key whose secret is on a hardware key; each section can be collapsed, and search covers both. Keys linked to a hardware key show a card icon on their row. Importing a key saved on Windows no longer fails with "invalid armor" (#13): line endings and a leading byte order mark are normalized before the armor is read.

Same engine as the phone apps

The desktop app compiles the exact OpenPGP engine the PGPony phone apps ship (packet handling, v4 and v6 (RFC 9580) keys, the post-quantum ML-KEM composite layer in both wire formats, the OpenPGP smart-card stack, MIME) on the same Bouncy Castle version.

  • Encrypt, decrypt, sign, verify. Text, files, and PGP/MIME mail bundles, with signature verification banners and never-overwrite outputs.
  • Post-quantum keys. ML-KEM-768 + X25519 composites in both the IETF (v6) and GnuPG/LibrePGP formats: generate, encrypt and decrypt.
  • Hardware security keys over USB. On-card key generation, decrypt, sign, PIN management and factory reset, over PC/SC.
  • Backups that cross devices. Encrypted .pgpony archives restore to and from the phone apps, with a recovery code.
  • Key discovery. WKD, the verifying keyserver and per-server publishing, with optional Tor routing and an onion mirror.
  • Password store. A read-only pass browser with hardware-key entries, an auto-clearing clipboard and live TOTP.
  • A command line. The pgpony CLI shares the app's keyring, streams stdin to stdout, and never takes a passphrase as a plain flag.
  • Pair with another computer. Move key pairs, public keys or a full backup between two PGPony installs on your local network, confirmed with a six-digit code.
  • Import from GnuPG. Brings in your GnuPG keys and trust, with secret keys coming through gpg itself so they stay protected by their passphrases. Nothing in the GnuPG folder is written.
  • Eleven languages. English, Deutsch, Español, Français, 日本語, 한국어, Português (BR), Русский, Türkçe, Українська and 简体中文, switchable without a restart.

Verify your download

Every artifact ships with a detached PGP signature, and each release carries a signed SHA256SUMS covering every installer. A PGP app should sign its own releases with its own kind of key. This one does, using the NorseHorse release key published on this site and over WKD. 

gpg --verify PGPony-macOS.dmg.asc PGPony-macOS.dmg
gpg --verify SHA256SUMS.asc SHA256SUMS
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS
Where the signatures live. The .asc files and SHA256SUMS are attached to the release alongside the installers, so you can verify before you ever run the thing.

Requirements and first-launch warnings

  • Apple silicon Mac. macOS 11+ on Apple silicon
  • Intel Mac. macOS 11+ on an Intel Mac
  • Linux. Debian or Ubuntu, x86-64
  • Windows. Windows 10 or later, x64
  • No Java to install. The runtime is bundled inside each installer.
  • Hardware keys on Linux need the pcscd daemon, which the .deb declares as a dependency and your package manager will pull in.
macOS opens it cleanly. The app is signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple, with the ticket stapled to the disk image, so it opens without a warning, and without needing a network connection to check.
Windows will warn on first run. The installer is not yet code-signed, so SmartScreen shows an "unrecognized app" prompt: choose More info, then Run anyway. If you would rather not take that on trust, verify the PGP signature and checksum above first. A code-signing certificate is being evaluated.
Linux installs with the dependency. sudo apt install ./PGPony-linux.deb pulls in PC/SC support for hardware keys.

Source code

The desktop source is published at github.com/norsehorse-dev/PGPonyDesktop under Apache-2.0, alongside the Android app and the shared crypto cores. The OpenPGP engine is vendored verbatim from the Android repository rather than reimplemented, so there is one implementation to audit, not two.